Online marketplaces frequently maintain inventories of items in one or more storage or distribution facilities, which are sometimes called fulfillment centers. Such facilities may include stations for receiving shipments of items, stations for storing such items, and/or stations for preparing such items for delivery to customers. For example, when a vendor delivers an inbound shipment of items to a fulfillment center, the shipment may arrive at a receiving station, where the items included in the shipment may be removed from the containers in which they arrived and transported to one or more storage areas within the fulfillment center by human workers or machines (e.g., one or more autonomous mobile robots). Likewise, when an online marketplace receives an order for one or more items from a customer, the items may be retrieved from their respective storage areas within the fulfillment center and transported to a distribution station, where the items may be prepared for delivery to the customer in an appropriate container with a suitable amount or type of dunnage, also by one or more machines or workers. Alternatively, where demand for an item already exists at a time when the item arrives at the fulfillment center, the item may be transported directly from the receiving station to the distribution station, or “cross-docked,” for prompt delivery to the customer.
Thus, a lifecycle of an item within a fulfillment center may be defined based on the various interactions between the item and one or more objects, humans, machines or structures in various locations. A status of the item within the fulfillment center may be determined based on whether, where and how recently a machine or a worker has interacted with an item, which may be referenced in terms of one or more transactions. For example, one transaction involving an item may occur when a worker removes a container including the item from a truck or other carrier arriving at a receiving station, while another transaction may occur when a worker removes the item from the container. Still other transactions may occur when a worker stows the item in a predetermined region of a storage area, retrieves the item from the predetermined storage region or transports the item to a destination station.
A modern fulfillment center frequently maintains a fast-paced, high volume sales environment where items may arrive or depart, and may be placed in storage or retrieved, at very high rates of speed. Therefore, promptly and accurately confirming the physical (e.g., locations, statuses or conditions of items within one or more item carriers or storage facilities within the fulfillment center) and the virtual parity (e.g., records regarding such locations, statuses or conditions) within a fulfillment center environment is of paramount importance. Presently, information regarding a transaction involving an item may be captured and stored using one or more computers or computer-related devices.
For example, items which arrive at, are stored in or depart from a fulfillment center, and the various item carriers or storage facilities within the fulfillment center, are commonly adorned with one or more optically readable identifiers or markings, such as a one-dimensional or two-dimensional bar code (e.g., a “QR” code), and workers or machines within the fulfillment center may be equipped with one or more scanners or readers that may decode the information associated with such identifiers or markings, and thereby register the presence of the items or their respective item carriers or storage facilities, or their association with a given transaction, at a particular time. In this regard, a bar code or other identifier on an item may be scanned or read upon an arrival of the item at the fulfillment center, when the item is stowed in a storage facility, when the item is retrieved from the storage facility and placed into an item carrier, or when the item arrives at a distribution station.
Because such fulfillment centers may span hundreds of thousands of square feet, and receive, store or distribute millions of items to tens of millions of customers, capturing and storing information regarding the various transactions involving such items or orders therefor is an arduous and time-consuming task. For example, most bar code scanners or readers are handheld devices, which thereby require a worker to aim a scanner or reader at a first bar code affixed to an item, activate the scanner or reader a first time, wait for the first bar code to be registered and/or decoded, then aim the scanner or reader at a second bar code affixed to an item carrier or storage facility and activate the scanner or reader a second time, with information regarding the transaction being recorded only upon the registration or decoding of the second bar code. Alternating back and forth between carrying an item, manipulating a scanner or reader, placing the item in an item carrier or storage facility, and manipulating the scanner or reader again may therefore create insuperable delays in the fulfillment process.